HERBIE! Journeys on our narrowboat and the trials and tribulations of maintaining her.

Thursday, May 08, 2014

Speed trap

Yesterday evening I helped out with a CRT Share the Space event at Little Venice. We were handing out our little canal map booklets to walkers and cyclists in the hope that they would read the bit about being considerate to other towpath users particularly in respect of cycling speed. Many of the walkers seemed delighted with the maps but the people we really needed to get at cycled past so fast that we couldn’t force a booklet on them. Don’t blame the lady in the photo, she was one of the good ones.

CRT’s idea is that events like these will get the message across about towpath cycling safety through education and persuasion, but I’m not so sure it will get at the real culprits. I would favour some sort of device that would tip them in the canal if they go too fast. Anyway I really enjoyed the event and a couple of us are planning to have another go up at Cowley lock in the near future. I get to wear my CRT volunteer tee shirt too.

Tomorrow were off to Norfolk for our annual sailing weekend on the broads. The weather forecast looks wet and windy, so it may be cold as well as terrifying. We must be mad.

I have decided not to buy a new boat with the earnings from my novel Jobs for the Boys as I don’t think the five pounds I have made so far will get me a very good one. Maybe I shouldn’t have given two hundred away for free. What it needs is a few more reviews to kick start it (so far I have got two reviews giving it an average of 4.5 stars), so if you have read it by now I’d be grateful for a review or a rating on the amazon / kindle site. If by some chance you actually liked it, then tell your mates. Who knows I might even make a tenner eventually.

5 comments:

Ian Williams
said...

Hopefully, today I have just increased your earnings on 'Jobs for the Boys' as I have purchased it through Amazon (Europe) and am looking forward to reading it!I am a narrow boat owner who lives in Switzerland but keeps the boat in the Midlands and gets to be on board alot less than I would like. But I do read your blog on a regular basis - Thank you!Ian

I've sent CRT my suggestion to tackle speeding cyclists, but it was on the towpath questionnaire thing so the chance of anyone actually following it up must be quite small. Rather than go into details here I'll make a blog post out of it - thanks for the prompt.

Late on this post…how many speeding cyclists end up in the canal, I wonder? Re your book - still reading between the papers for my studies. I like the parts about the musicians! A very nice device, that!